VIDEO: Father Stephen Freeman – Is Orthodoxy Irrelevant or Elitist?

26 thoughts on “VIDEO: Father Stephen Freeman – Is Orthodoxy Irrelevant or Elitist?”

1. Very informative, thank you and Lord bless.☦️

2. What more can one say but AMEN, AMEN, AMEN.
   Thank you for this timely message. To God be the glory, in His Holy Name.

3. Very good! Thanks for posting.

4. Simple yet honest and deep answer. Thanks for sharing

5. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. – Hebrews 13:8 ☦❤

6. Ah I love his humility.

7. Steven Freeman is an evolutionist. Rejects the fathers teachings regarding higher criticism- don’t trust the guy

8. ‘Orthodoxy is not taking its cues from the culture’. Deep

9. Wait, so performing a citizen's excommunication on a layman who cannot read byzantine notation isn't canon?

10. Sir, am from India and my name is AAMIR I want to become an orthodox Christian what can I do
    In India there is not such kind of good teachings about orthodoxy.
    Because here is about 95% Hindu religious people.
    So what can I do

11. Hebrews 13:8 The Message
    7-8 Appreciate your pastoral leaders who gave you the Word of God. Take a good look at the way they live, and let their faithfulness instruct you, as well as their truthfulness. There should be a consistency that runs through us all. For Jesus doesn’t change—yesterday, today, tomorrow, he’s always totally himself.

12. ❌💔❌ ICONS ❌💔❌

    Deuteronomy 4:15-19 GOD’S WORD Translation
    15 You didn’t see the Lord the day he spoke to you from the fire at Mount Horeb. So be very careful 16 that you don’t become corrupt and make your own carved idols.

    ♨️🌐⛪♨️ Don’t make statues that represent men or women, ♨️🔥🏯♨️ 17 any animal on earth, any creature with wings that flies, 18 any creature that crawls on the ground, or any fish in the water. 19 Don’t let yourselves be tempted to worship and serve what you see in the sky—the sun, the moon, the stars, or anything else. The Lord your God has given them to all people everywhere.

13. Isaiah 62:5-7
    1 Peter 3:6 Amplified Bible
    6 just as Sarah obeyed Abraham [following him and having regard for him as head of their house], calling him [a]lord. And you have become her daughters if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear [that is, being respectful toward your husband but not giving in to intimidation, nor allowing yourself to be led into sin, nor to be harmed].

    Footnotes

    1 Peter 3:6 In ancient times a common title of honor and respect.

14. I AM THE LORD GOD OF YOUR FATHER'S ABRAHAM ISAAC JACOB AND JESUS HAS SENT ME AS A MERCY TO HUMANITY.

    I AM THE FACE OF ISIS TO THE ANCIENTS AND LUGH CALLED ME NUTTERS SEVERAL YEARS AGO.

15. I grew up with Orthodoxy forced on me. I left because I feel that Prophet religions are man-made and absurd. I found a deeper spirituality within the Wisdom religions. I continue to follow what is happening within the Orthodox church for the rest of my extended family. I see Orthodox churches giving in to media hype and dominating cultural trends all the time. Everyday examples that I see within many Orthodox churches are how they serve Christmas Mass on Dec.25 or how they have included musical instruments into mass. It looks like they are keeping up with the Roman Catholics in hopes of maintaining or keeping members. My two examples are just surface issues, yet they are blatant. I can only imagine the changes that are occurring within the orthodox dogma to keep pace with the Vatican.

16. Before 325 AD there wasn’t a “Church”, there wasn’t accepted universal scripture and there wasn’t significant agreement on ritual. There certainly wasn’t a Creed until Nicaea. So when you go to a “good bible based church” your getting only part of the picture. If you want a personal relationship with God you can do that and never enter a Church, Orthodox or otherwise. But if you want to participate in sacramental worship the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is the only place where that occurs. To a great extent the books of the Bible were selected by Church Fathers as was the tradition and the ritual. The three together are much like a three legged table. Remove any one and the table will fall. When evangelicals say they require nothing but scripture they are ignoring history. The history of the men and women who guided worship, and by examples of faith, for centuries before the compilation of the Bible and the doctrine since gave us the Church. If you cannot trust the men who gave us tradition and ritual how can you trust and why would you use exclusively their Bible. If Jesus himself wrote a single word or better a single letter perhaps you would have an argument for Evangellicalism but he did not. Orthodoxy holds faith in a sacred space. it’s not expressed on a bumper sticker next to ones favorite sports team. It’s more, it’s better because it requires us to strive to be better. Will we live up to its requirements fully? I know I probably won’t. But it gives me examples to strive, so there’s still a chance.

    John, a Mormon raised, Catholic educated, Greek Orthodox Parishioner

17. Amen! Wonderful!

18. God help us.

19. That we live in a sick culture is common opinion among most Christian denominations.. nothing new.

20. Any church engaging in denominationalism is being elitist.

21. All churches are facing the same problems in that they cater to families and to bread winners of their congregations and not to their progeny ,their future.
    the young and restless have little money and little reason to support any church. what is needed is to find truly gifted churchmen that know how to inspire the young.
    problem solved!

22. "I have learned that in addition to the spirit of this time there is still another spirit at work, namely that which rules the depths of everything contemporary:
    The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still
    thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning.
    Filled with human pride and blinded by the presumptuous spirit of the times, I long sought to hold that other
    spirit away from me. But I did not consider that the spirit of the depths from time immemorial and for all the future
    possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time, who changes with the generations.
    The spirit of the depths has subjugated all pride and arrogance to the power of judgment. He took away my
    belief in science, he robbed me of the joy of explaining and ordering things, and he let devotion to the ideals of this
    time die out in me.
    He forced me down to the last and simplest things.
    The spirit of the depths took my understanding and all my knowledge and placed them at the service of the
    inexplicable and the paradoxical.
    He robbed me of speech and writing for everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together
    of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning.
    This supreme meaning, this image of God, this melting together of the hot and the cold, that is you and only
    you." – Carl Jung

23. If orthodoxy is irrelevant and elitist, so much the worse for fashionable opinions and the democratization of doctrine.

24. "I've occasionally run across a parish that feels like its task in America is somehow another to demonstrate their loyalty to the last Tsar, which is really a non-starter as American issues go. It wasn't an issue then, it's not an issue now, not for us." – Fr. Stephen Freeman at 4:10

    This is true in some capacity from my experience. There are plenty of young men like myself who convert, but many go off the deep end obsessing with the Romanovs, particularly Nicholas II. I don't have any issue with taking an interest in the royal family, in fact much of the Church remembers them as holy martyrs. But the Romanovs become virtually the only thing some guys want to talk about. They will usually relate it to how modern American culture is "depraved" and how we need to go back. But we can never go back, we can only move forward. We can return to values, but we need to make sure that these values are being lived out fully and not kept in a case to be gawked at as we pat ourselves on the back saying "BASED". It's ridiculous. The focus of Orthodoxy, really Christianity, is the holistic renewal of humanity through the teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, Our Lord. Questions regarding culture and values will shift and answers will have to be re-examined and weighed to ensure we're aware of where we are, but it needs to point to where we're going.

25. Irrelevant to what? That is what they don't explain

26. As someone who's had experience with Orthodoxy in the US, I would say that the issue is less elitism, although I think that's a problem, especially with converts, but more with insularity. Orthodoxy is so small in this country, and in many places still so rooted in an ethnic past, that it does not seem to be capable of reaching out to wider audiences.

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